Don’t Send in the Bulldozers Yet, Adarsh Owners Say

The 31 storey Adarsh Housing Society building in Mumbai’s Colaba area was originally approved to be only six floors.

It could be a less than perfect ending for the Adarsh Cooperative Housing Society in Mumbai’s up-market Colaba area. India’s environment ministry on Sunday ordered that the society, whose name means “perfection” or “ideal” in Hindi, be demolished for flouting environment norms.

The order was the latest blow to a housing complex that has been weathering controversy for months after revelations last year that apartments that were to be home to war widows and veterans, instead housed several politicians, bureaucrats and their relatives.

But the building’s residents are in no mood to take things lying down. Fortunately for them, there are usually lots of things you can do (legally) to prevent or indefinitely delay an order like this from being implemented—even when it comes from a federal ministry. The first step: Go to court.

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Satish Maneshinde, the lawyer representing the society of Adarsh flat-owners, said his clients would be doing exactly that. He said the order issued by India’s environment minister, Jairam Ramesh, was “totally malafide and arbitrary.”

The society has already filed a petition in December in the Mumbai High Court challenging the move by municipal authorities to revoke its building permissions after the corruption scandal came to light, Mr Maneshinde said.

“We will be filing a fresh petition in the High Court next week,” said Mr. Maneshinde, adding that the ground were still to be decided. “The society is going to have its meeting soon and will consider the options it has.”

The order issued on Sunday by Mr. Ramesh to demolish Adarsh Society for flouting costal regulations, stated that “in light of all facts, circumstances, discussion, consideration, reasoning and analysis” presented by the society the ministry had decided that the entire structure must be removed.

“The fact that there may well be other cases of similar violations provides no ground for the mitigation of the penalty attracted by such an egregious violation as that by the society,” Mr. Ramesh stated in the order, adding, “Ignorance of the law can never be an excuse for non-compliance.”

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